else could it be? A jug of orange juice?
‘I don’t take my coffee black. I take it white, with one teaspoon of sugar.’ He leant back in his chair and scrutinised her. ‘Surely you should know that by now?’ he asked softly. ‘You’ve really changed, and more than just your hairstyle. Am I missing something here? Am I being a bit dense?’
Beth retrieved the cup from the desk, steadying her nerves. She had automatically poured him the same coffee as she had herself. Stupid. Little oversights like this made this dangerous game as glaringly obvious as if she had committed some larger, more noticeable mistake.
‘I’m sorry. My mind must have been elsewhere.’
‘Either that, or you left it behind in Cambridge.’
‘What?’ Beth asked sharply, smiling to hide the sudden tension she felt.
‘You went to stay with your sister, didn’t you? Jane told me.’
‘My sister?’ Her mind was working furiously. Who, she wondered, was Jane? The office spy from the sounds of it, and office spies could be extremely dangerous.
‘Something wrong with your hearing today, Laura?’ he asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.
Beth smiled again. ‘Of course I went to stay with my sister. In Cambridge.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘I would have gone somewhere more glamorous, but my funds were a little low at the time.’ She would have to stop being so jumpy every time she thought that he was edging towards the truth. After all, there was no way that he could even suspect that Laura was miles away in her little flat, while she was here pretending to be someone she was not.
‘Where would you have gone?’ he asked curiously. ‘I would have associated you a few weeks ago with somewhere on the French Riviera, close to a few nightclubs, but perhaps I misread you completely.’
Beth shrugged non-committally. She didn’t like this sudden digression on to personal topics. There could be a lot of unexpected traps here. For a start, she didn’t know what Laura had told him about herself, if anything, and he wasn’t likely to dismiss another slip-up like the coffee. He was altogether too shrewd. His clever, calculating mind probably stored information that most normal people would forget within seconds. Stored it and had it quite handy to recall at a moment’s notice.
‘I’ve never been to the French Riviera,’ Beth finally volunteered, as he continued to look at her from under his dark lashes. ‘And I’ve never felt any particular wish to go, if you must know. In fact, I haven’t done a great deal of travelling at all.’
‘But you’d like to?’ he prompted.
Beth fidgeted uncomfortably. She didn’t like this. She was sure that he couldn’t give two hoots whether she hated the idea of planes, or else saved madly to go on one. Laura had said that he barely noticed her except in her capacity as secretary. So why the sudden interest now? She wondered whether he suspected something odd, a little thought hovering somewhere at the back of his mind. A little thought that he was beginning to explore.
‘Wouldn’t everyone?’ she answered distantly.
‘No. I personally have seen enough of airports to last me a lifetime. Hotel life, you know, outstays its welcome very quickly.’
‘Does it? I wouldn’t know. Anyway, I’ll make you a fresh cup of coffee now, if you like.’
‘Why,’ he drawled, ‘do I get the impression that you’re eager to get out of my company?’
His words, for reasons that she couldn’t fathom, sent a hot flood of colour to her cheeks. Or maybe it was the way he had spoken them, in that lazy, slightly speculative voice.
Whatever, there was no answer to that question and she left the office quickly, only realising how tense she had been when she exhaled her breath deeply in the safety of her own room.
By the time she re-entered his office she was perfectly in control of her senses once again, and the cup of coffee was precisely how he liked it.
He began to talk to her about work and she breathed a sigh of relief. When he talked about work, she was on relatively safe ground.
As she was leaving his office, she turned around and said on the spur of the moment, ‘Do you remember what you said to me about getting bored of hotel life very quickly?’
He looked up from his paperwork and nodded.
‘Well,’ Beth continued awkwardly, ‘it’s just a thought, but these projects in St Lucia and Santo Domingo—you could try and make them places that would never outstay their welcome.’
He looked at her assessingly.
‘Any suggestions?’
Beth laughed genuinely. ‘None at all. Don’t forget I’m inexperienced enough to find any sort of hotel life quite a novelty.’
He looked as though he was about to say something, but when he finally did it was only to inform her briskly that she could apply herself to giving the matter some thought, then he returned to his paperwork.
Effective dismissal, Beth thought, letting herself out, but she felt suddenly invigorated.
She was absorbed in reading one of the folders on St Lucia when the outside door to her office opened. But it wasn’t Marian, who normally peeped in with files or reports for Marcos.
This woman she had never seen before.
‘Can I help you?’ Beth asked, wondering how she had managed to bypass the usual security checks and make her way successfully to the top floor.
‘Is Marcos around?’ The woman smiled politely. She was very poised, every strand of blonde hair neatly tucked into a sophisticated chignon at the back of her neck.
‘Who may I say is asking?’
‘Oh, don’t bother to announce me,’ she said quickly, ‘I’ll let myself in.’
Before Beth could do anything to stop her, the woman had made her way to the connecting door, and Beth could just see Marcos’s dark head look up, then the door was very firmly closed.
She returned to her work, but her mind was seething with questions.
Finally, and with a feeling of ridiculous surreptitiousness, she called Laura at her workplace, and said without preamble, ‘A blonde woman just walked into Marcos’s office. She didn’t tell me who she was. Am I supposed to know?’
‘Blonde?’ Laura asked. ‘Very leggy and very glamorous? Probably wearing silk or cashmere?’
‘That’s the one.’ The woman had been dressed in a pale pink cashmere suit with a strand of pearls around her neck, and they didn’t look like the synthetic stuff either.
‘Remember I told you that Marcos is quite something with the women?’
‘Yes,’ Beth answered.
‘Well, that’s one of them. Angela Fordyce.’ She groaned down the phone. ‘He finished with her about three weeks ago, and under no circumstances were you supposed to let her in to see him!’
CHAPTER THREE
BETH TRIED TO SUMMON UP the feeling of bravado she had had the previous day when she had resolutely decided that Marcos could handle his own damned personal life.
But sitting here, in front of her computer, her eyes flitting warily across to the connecting door, it was difficult.
She had already been subjected to his cold anger and it was something she had no desire to experience again.
She frowned at the file she had been poring over a minute before, but the words were just a jumble of black and white. Eventually she gave up.
She could, she thought, leave for home. It was already half-past five. She chewed her lip, glanced